Fallout 4's Modular Level Design

[@LondonRook]

OVERVIEW 0:48 Modular Design Overview 3:22 History of Bethesda Kits FUNDAMENTALS 4:31 Defining the Footprint 5:43 Tiling 6:12 Extents 7:06 Pivot Points 7:58 Transitions TECHNIQUES 8:47 Layered Inserts 9:40 Local Snap Parents 10:27 Pivot and Flange Kits PLANNING KITS 13:09 Defining Needs 14:51 Consolidating Kits GRANULARITY 16:18 Introduction 17:50 Changes to Workflow 18:41 Pack-Ins Prefab 19:21 Kit Readiness and Interdependencies PRIORITIES 21:56 Valuing Common Elements 25:40 Impact on Level Designers VARIATION 28:18 Visual Variety with Consistent Logic 29:52 Damaged Platform Kit 30:32 Material Swaps EXAMPLES 31:23 The Industrial Kit 32:35 The Utility Kit 33:35 The Steam Tunnel Kit 34:12 The Deco Kit (Exterior Buildings) EXTERIOR DESIGN 35:22 DC in Fallout 3 36:04 New Guidelines 41:17 New Problems 43:11 New Solutions ASSORTED ADVICE 44:36 Plugs and Sockets 45:11 Kit-Based Destruction 46:10 Platforms 46:55 Dynamic Destruction 47:19 Decals and Greebles 47:44 Layers 48:04 Mouse Wheel Swap 48:31 Helper Markers 49:01 The Machine Kit FINAL THOUGHTS 50:06 Conclusion QUESTIONS 51:47 When to Playtest? 52:34 Deciding Player Workshop Items 53:31 Collaborating Artists and Designers 54:24 Solving Performance Problems 56:24 Solving Team Disagreements 59:05 Optimization of Texture Uses 1:00:19 Placeholders and Greyboxes

[@sebas1111_]

Good man, have some cake 🍰

[@estebanbritoborges]

You're a goddamned hero!!!!!!! :)

[@lukasallenbaugh4728]

This video was made 6 years ago and it's still the most comprehensive I can find on modular kit building. Very thorough and generous in the variety of information given.

[@IANC4EVER]

Bethesda is onto a winner as long as they keep the files open to modding. id say that I enjoyed the game after modding it to the point of building a new game. (180hrs in, I made it to Diamond City, as for Shaun, dont ever giv a s***). Overall, FO4 is very much worth my £40.

[@geeinfnt]

Skyrim and fallout4 has shitty level design,im a fan of elders and fallout but latest creations is a huge disappointment..so empty an soulless..quantity instead of quality..

[@737-p1f]

lil fanboy is hurt

[@erwinzyx]

Really gee infnt? If you're such an expert on level design, how would you do it? Better yet, show me some examples of YOUR work.

[@homeslice3964]

5 minutes worth of content stretched into an hour.

[@MrCOPYPASTE]

Can you do better?

[@nagger8216]

@@MrCOPYPASTE Does it matter? Why so butthurt? This argument is dumb as hell anyway, no one needs to be a gourmet chef to tell you your food is bad

[@lolmysteries]

Came here for a dev talk, left because of cringey water gulping throat lugey mukbang...

[@camzimmeman97]

I love the "Boston, because fuck you" part.

[@camzimmeman97]

Um, yeah? I did.

[@frankydostal4758]

oh yeah so taht why skyrim caves all feel like the same shitty cave over and over and over again

[@B1GB3ANS]

What a thirsty man

[@Pentazemin]

haha yeah, but I prefer to see someone like him drinking, than that people by nerves gets his mouth dry and makes that disgusting sound while speaking

[@DeTaXeSports]

I prefer zucc drinking water

[@ohmm8891]

Great presentation but that was fucking annoying

[@edminchau811]

@@ohmm8891 Yes, it is rude to do that to the audience.

[@yrussq]

Long story short: 1. The smaller the pieces the more stuff you can do out of them. 2. The more texturing variation of each piece you have the more variate it can look. 3. Universal kits allow big studios on big scales work faster.

[@PlebNC]

This talk makes the way the settlement workshop was implemented make so much sense. It's a limited version of their kit system adapted for use by the players to make edits in run-time. The part about pivot points for those kits also helps understand how rotating pieces that snap in the settlement workshop works too. Very enlightening.

[@HyborianYT]

Not only it was limited, it was also incredibly restrictive and had no flexibility until modded.

[@PlebNC]

Perhaps the limits were put in place to maintain system stability, particularly on the console versions, or to reduce the possible number of configurations to make performing QA on the system more manageable?

[@longpinkytoes]

@@PlebNC or the devs were trying to protect the settlement system from fobo (fear-of-better-options) aka Pickle Barrel menu paralysis syndrome :P

[@RSProduxx]

also makes it a little clearer how little effort actually went into 76... Compared to other Bethesda games I mean.

[@-lijosu-]

Before I watched this I was always wondering why I find the level design of Bethesda games so relentlessly boring. To make it abundantly clear. I *get* it. They work in a huge studio, with tons of people. Their games are enormous. They have to shave off as much time and effort as possible. They have to be efficient in ways no one else is. I get that, and the effort they put in is impressive. These people have decades of experience and they're some of the best in the industry. But man. As a direct consequence of me having felt like the levels are boring *before* knowing how they were made... I just gotta feel like these people have somewhere along the way forgotten important stuff, like avoiding repetition, and making environments feel unique.They clearly put effort into fixing those problems, but IMO they tackle them from completely wrong angles. Instead of putting in the time to create more hero pieces, they double down on the basics. Instead of putting time into the art of it, they're so focused on avoiding being the bottleneck.

[@zetetick395]

_"We're gonna do a talk we've already done before, 3 years ago, but with some small tweaks"_ - A *very* Bethesda approach. :P (why is the second chap only given like 2 minutes to speak?)

[@jamesbinnie8765]

He's given multiple times to speak throughout the video lol As an environmental artist this was incredibly interesting, I have to watch this 2 or 3 times through Because this information is great.

[@giampaolomannucci8281]

Awesome joke :)

[@8thlvlMage]

"Our next talk will be on how to create modular presentations."

[@jacksonelh]

I quite enjoy hearing the talk again. The progression of their design is interesting to look at.

[@AndDoubleWHY]

Just to think they threw out 100% of what is in this talk for starfield

[@IlIlIllllllI]

😂😂 True

[@Dracolych69]

Wow, that is a very useful presentation.

[@diegoantoniorosariopalomin4977]

Dracolych69 betheseda may have too many problems , but they talk abou what they do best in their presentations

[@VidurMurali]

Take a shot every time someone says "kit"...

[@konstantingeist3587]

tfw "kit" means whale in Russian

[@illdeletethismusic]

this process reminds me a lot of design methods developed for architecture during the era of historism. as historism intended to bring back a variety of classical styles, and often elements of multiple of them, architects started more rigidly separating the design of walls and floorplans, and stuck more clearly to the separation of floors, and as a result the style of a wall could be swapped out without impacting the rest of the build, and facades could have inspirations from various builds from one floor to another on top of the same main wall, or occasionally with ornament lines separating floors of different facade material

[@ryanmartin8060]

That mouse wheel swap is cool as shit! Possible in UE4, maybe?

[@8thlvlMage]

We can only hope! That was the only part of the presentation that was outstanding to me.

[@lordevilpoptart]

Ryan Martin sure you could do it in ue4... with blueprints even

[@fulsame1]

Too bad they didnt take any of their own advice for the settlement construction on the player side. Not a single window in the vanilla set, come the fuck on

[@SpaceKingofSpace]

Its not the kit itself that is bad; tons of games use them just fine. Stuff like Enderal and Nehrim used even Bethesda kits to make interesting play spaces. It's just the mass repetition that kills it; you can only see the same set of models and textures a few times before it feels like you're visiting the same location over and over. You need good landmarks and visual distinction to make better playspaces. The Concord townhouse is a nice level but the next 3 houses you explore are likely going to all look the same. Same problem with Skyrim caves, same with F3 subways. Bethesda should just make smaller, more distinct worlds. That and make better animations/movement feel. No momentum in the movement feels awful.

[@The_Eno]

Your comment is ridiculous because they make a video game based on demographic appeal. You saying that they "should" make their worlds/levels smaller to make everything more distinct is like saying that McDonald's should shut down half their stores so they can make what stores remain sell higher quality food. Turning a small local store into a huge franchise is what made them famous. Likewise Bethesda's epic scale of world building is what put them on the map. Most people that go to McDonald's don't want high quality food. If they wanted high quality food they would of gone to health food cafe or a very nice restaurant. There's truth in what you say, that one has to make smaller and more distinct worlds to achieve more appeal visually, but the problem is in reducing the size you also reduce game-play and immersion. Scale is their unique selling point that enable them to ship so many title. I think simply getting them to focus on concept over art at the same scale is what would make everything more distinct.That way you have more variations and just one or two settings lower for graphics (no big deal). I can completely agree with you on the animations/movement feel though. Their combat designers and animators are god awful at keeping up with the quality of combat and movement in other games. In 2006 dark messiah came out. 5 years later: Skyrim turned out to be one of the most disappointing combat experiences I've ever had the mis-fortune of experiencing.

[@longpinkytoes]

wait now... i can't. climb. a. ladder. ?

[@ebelley]

@@The_Eno Scale is nothing without quality, ther is not much quality here. Mcdonald are selling better quality food than before. Everyone should learn of their past experience to better themselves. Bethesda are not in my opinion. Now i wish this company would disapear so the right to fallout could be sell to a more worhty company.

[@The_Eno]

@@ebelley Learning from past experiences is a truth I can't deny. We are blessed to repeat that which we don't learn from. However regarding your stance on quality, keep in mind that quantity is a quality in itself. Have a deep think about what mine craft is. The quality of assets, animations, sounds. Everything is so low quality. But there is a sense of scale. There is also an en-thesis on environment interaction. If what you say is true: mine-craft would be nothing. But it's not. It's something. Something very important. Because there is no "better" just different. It's this mindset that separates regular people from game designers and you from me. It also separates free thinkers from sheep and spiritual people from those stuck in their ego. I hope you can remind yourself that no one in the world owes you anything. Perhaps this way you start wishing for things that are in your control :)

[@alwaysAbathur]

Ace there are many different meanings to “should” in terms of feasibility yeah sure, changing a fundamental studio design principal is unlikely to happen. In terms of what would make a better game, hard disagree. Mankind Divided had the best open world in the last decade and it was tiny. Also your comparison to McDonalds is pretty ridiculous and digging into it even a little reveals how shallow the comparison is. First of all, the games market is obviously supremely different to prepared food (an industry which has been around almost as long as society itself). Consumers don’t give a shit about the innovation of a cheeseburger but they sure do want better graphics, gameplay, story every single year, even if the games are taking exponentially longer to make. People want experiences that are good, even if they don’t know what Is going to be good. Look at Breath of the Wild: complete departure from one of the longest running and most well established series, but it has sold almost DOUBLE the lifetime record of any other entry in the series. In conclusion, make good games. BGS will probably only start to change their design philosophy if a “regular” sequel flops. I doubt the failure of 76 will change their minds as they probably just see it as a failed experiment.

[@agustinlado]

Damn, congratulations. Joel is a natural both explaining and talking to a huge audience. One of the best talks I've ever seen.

[@FelixIakhos]

Omg that scroll swap option would've saved me sooo much time in the CK xD

[@Satanjugend]

the thumbnail is an accurate representation of bethesda's work on the fallout ip

[@Aaronlcyrus]

It's really really sad when Obsidian gets a short amount of time to make a fallout game, and they make a masterpiece. But then Bethesda gets to make a new one with a new engine and everything, and they just make a minecraft/CoD clone. It was a good game, just not a good fallout game, and certainly not an RPG?

[@coprographia]

Satanjugend yeah i'm flagging this for misleading thumbnails

[@DrLynch2009]

By turning it from a DEAD franchise to a billion dolar one?

[@felipenovais8364]

DEAD? They were the ones who killed it. Van Buren would've happened.

[@Frostiedkdk]

Im sure nostalgia plays a pretty big role, i went back to play the old ones and they were absolute trash.

[@camille-jeanhelou4444]

Fo4 is full of identical repeating trash. Your mind just blocks it out and ignores it while you're playing, cause you've seen the same pile of trash a hundred times, and it's always totally irrelevant to gameplay and story and general feel of the game. The game isn't terrible though. It's just a soulless uninspired by-the-numbers corporate indeavor. It's meh, but it's playable. All due respect to artists, designers, animators, and programmers though. I get it. It's a job. you did as well as they let you. And you did accomplish amazing things, all things considered

[@Mixxathon]

I use 3D engines primarily to create pen & paper battlemaps for D&D to run on our large gamingtable-turned-into-a-large-projection-canvas. I hate when I get a bunch of granular pieces to work with and love the whole kit mentality. I want it quick & dirty. This was either way a good video.

[@jacksonelh]

I really like how bethesda utilizes kits. It adds really nice visual consistency.

[@HieronymousLex]

“Visual consistency” is a nice way to say recycled assets

[@jacksonelh]

@@HieronymousLex every game ever made recycles assets

[@jonahulichny9874]

@@HieronymousLex As someone else mentioned, every game ever has recycled assets. No one wants to code every basic shack from the ground up. And when push comes to shove, game looks fine and no one notices. Not everything has to be made from scratch.

[@darkwraithcovenantindustries]

I challenge you to name a single game that doesn't reuse assets. Some studios are just better at dressing them up so you don't notice. Some big popular games even reuse assets from older games. You can get quite a but of variety from clever, creative reuses and applying different materials and texturing.@@HieronymousLex

[@Fiferthedragonok]

I appritiate this game far more than before

[@KrullMaestaren]

Fun and interesting talk but it also gave me some questions about the oddities surrounding lower graphical settings in Fallout 4. Looking forward to the future talk about "version 3" ;) Would also be interesting with a 60 minutes talk about the character customization system as well :)

[@XaramasLP]

Great talk! Was very interesting to get an insight in the LD workflow.

[@nirritis1516]

This whole TALK is sumed up by "how can we recycle as much as possible". =/

[@TarnkappenToast]

Nothing wrong with that. ^^

[@playonce4186]

What about the performance? So many meshes that are individually placed in the editor.

[@HyborianYT]

13-14k draw calls in Lexington loading in all at once, it destroys any computer.

[@KeiNovak]

They address this in the Q&A.

[@kitten-inside]

The object combination tech saved them from a lot of performance issues. If you disable it via mods, or by changing the relevant INI setting, the game becomes completely unplayable in some areas. We're talking single digit frame rates. Even when working, it still breaks down in some places because it was made with typical Bethesda QA (i.e. not much).

[@SuperNath97]

I got a creation kit boner. awsome video

[@Skillet98]

"We try to keep it balanced between how much we want it to look good and how much we want it to work good..." So... they just chose to go with... neither...

[@diegoantoniorosariopalomin4977]

Kevin Walter every presentation Bethesda gives seems very sound , and they have talked about how to reuse assets to reduce development time and use iterative design to improve gameplay , yet their titles take 5 years and 90 percent of fallout 4 quests consist of go here , kill enemies and retrieve item .

[@Skillet98]

There's context for this. Bethesda's games are larger than most other games on the market. Bethesda has a development team of around 100 members... they've hardly hired new developers at all over the course of the 15 years. These two things explain long development costs. My problem with the statements made in this video are with the fact that Fallout 4 runs so poorly, and at the same time, isn't exactly the best looking game on the market. They have serious issues with optimization, and considering Skyrim had the same issues but to a lesser extent, and some of those issues were fixed when they updated the game to run on DX11... it seems to me that they're focusing on the wrong aspects of game design here. They're focused more on the form than the function, and the games are suffering for it.

[@diegoantoniorosariopalomin4977]

I think that fallout 4 lack of graphic complexity and performance doesn't have to do with Bethesda's workflow , but rather with the creation engine . I have been fiddling with a ue4 plugin that implements modular game design using a massive number of meshes , but It can run cities fast , because it uses instancing and performant occlusion culling , about the graphical complexity , let me quote one of my earlier comments :

[@diegoantoniorosariopalomin4977]

the game may be visually appealing , as the models have a good art direction and be based on a good material system , but to have good PBR games also need a realistic context ( ilumination ) and f4 doesnt have one (there is no bounce lighning and the reflections are fake as they are always the same , don't change depending on the location ) without it the game would have been better using a more artist controlable non pbr system .

[@Skillet98]

Well the game uses cubemaps for all reflections, so there's that. Would be nice if Bethesda brought in id to help update the Creation Engine. But yeah, that's basically what I'm saying. They're trying to push these larger, more cluttered environments and the engine is being crushed under the weight of it. It's destroying performance and the game's visuals don't support the impact, so the average player just looks at it and thinks "well this game sucks because the framerate is all over the place and it looks like it was released in 2010..." As I said, Skyrim had similar issues running on DX9.5/10. The pushed the API to its limits and the game suffered for it... especially if you tried to pile more and more mods on top of it. When SSE was released updated to run on DX11 and given a 64 bit process, many of the issues that 32 bit Oldrim had were nearly eliminated. The memory issues are gone and you can easily spawn in dozens of NPCs without crashing/freezing the game or destroying the framerate, there are a bunch of graphical updates that run better than ENB and give Boris more efficient ways of hooking into the engine... the list goes on. It's an issue of Bethesda putting the cart before the horse. They're piling more and more on top of the engine and it's being crippled in the process, which flushes performance right down the toilet.

[@IamXhedo]

Fallout 4 has many problems, but since i can choose, i choose to enjoy the game for it's good things. I love Fallout 4.

[@fluffyman6910]

Dude I salute you. While I can see why fallout 4 may look like a bad game to most, I thought it was very very very fun. In my book I call that a good game.

[@longpinkytoes]

there is a mod called Mercy for skyrim where npc behaviour doesn't foster a sociopathic distrust of people begging for their lives. i would be happy if raiders chased you off for stealing, took pot shots on your way past them if you killed one of them, and went full-on bloodlust if you actually attack them personally. but going 0-60 for walking through their camp is just mental.

[@laffindees]

that thumbnail tho

[@edwin11373]

Laffter, hahaha, that pic they showed was so random. ^^

[@andrewyang2320]

"It's worth playing around with the different types of footprints you can have, for example you could double the height of that same basic footprint and give yourself the same flexibility and tiling on an equilateral horizontal plane but giving yourself a different ability to create a look and feel with additional headroom." 5:22 That's just amazing

[@HenryIVth]

Is the 2013 talk on naming conventions mentioned on 16:30 still online anywhere?

[@airsoftfngs1686]

Local Snap Parent.. I LOVE YOU!

[@siarheipilat8152]

he forgot to mention that fallout 4 is a mod for skyrim

[@jonahulichny9874]

Except it really isn’t. You really need to learn to differentiate between different rpg mechanics.

[@skLaszlo]

does no one understand what happens if you don't move your mic away when you drink?

[@mitaywalle]

one of the best talk on GDC, thank to authors!

[@AadilSharifDotNetDeveloper]

Thank you so much for this talk. I am a junior artist now & looking to improve my level design & this was so much fun to watch. Thank you to the team & both speakers.

[@MrDatalife1]

fantastic presentation!

[@Aviiven]

Did they seriously get bethesda to do a conference on level design? Fallout and Skyrim have horribly dull level design! It's just tunnels connecting to other tunnels and galleries!

[@The_Eno]

It's a great video on modular design flow. He talks about all the concepts level designers should be aware of that companies have been using for years. So it's good for students of level design like myself to become more familiar and write down concepts I haven't read enough about. But yeah Totally agree with you. Extremely dull atmosphere, but the story and level design over-all are excellent. I would blame the engine and art director for the dull atmosphere. I'm sure the artist would make it much prettier if they had it their way.

[@thanatosor]

I must say that I miss Morrowind and Oblivion, Fallout 2,1, classic, tatics more than them.

[@blakecasimir]

@@thanatosor I swear Oblivion even with its kits still felt like it had more varied dungeon design than Skyrim. Skyrim dungeons = "linear circle with unlockable quick exit". Even so this talk does have a lot of useful information.

[@DigitallPimp]

Does anyone know why some of the assets Bethesda show here have so much seemingly unnecessary geometry? Take the cylindrical silos at 31:48 or even just some of the cube shaped assets in the steam tunnel kit at 33:38. They have a bunch of extra edge loops on very simple objects and I can't work out why

[@chrisbarnett6362]

I've been using 3DS Max for about 13 years and dabbled in games design for just as long. From what I can tell there seems to be higher poly and lower poly models and also possibly LOD models too It's always best to work forwards than backwards. If they need to change something then it's easier to work with the original higher poly model than you manipulate the low poly. Besides, perchance he just threw this together for the presentation to get his point across lol.

[@DigitallPimp]

I too thought they could be the higher poly models but the extra geometry on them doesn't seem to add any detail to the model. Honestly the models look like low poly models with a tonne of extra edge loops. Only reason I can see for adding extra edge loops like that is to allow more detailed vertex painting. But they don't touch on vertex painting in this presentation and I would of thought that would be a pretty key aspect of modular design as it helps you break up repetition on your assets.

[@georgebarota651]

I'd say it's most likely for texturing purposes.

[@Sheldezare]

No reason other than minor aesthetics or simply lazyness due to having to create a lot of items in a short amount of time.

[@googleslocik]

+DigitalPimp Ether for tiling uvs amd cpmtrping smoothing groups and those arent lods, or incompetence. Sine you are right, those dont add anything to the shape, and wouldnt have any other justification as fallout 4 dosnt do tessellation, or vertex painting as you said

[@JETWTF]

35:53 They made a mistake here by thinking that complicated metro system was a problem that needed to be removed. It was fun to explore the metro system, where does this track go and what will I find there? Let's find out! Yeah it got to be a slog as the game continued but it wasn't something that should have been removed and replaced with independent stations. Remove the walls in the world space was all that needed to be removed. Being able to get completely lost in the Metro was a good thing because it promoted exploration.

[@Claire-xk5bb]

i disagree. it was too much. some is okay. but f3's tunnel system was imo uninspiring and overkill. really bored alot of players. too much of a good thing is bad.

[@JETWTF]

FO3's tunnels were annoying and too much because you were forced into using them to get anywhere downtown until you get fast travel markers open. In FO4 you wouldn't be forced to use them so they would be like another dungeon to explore except the entries are in different locations in the game world.

[@DiegoBessa3D]

Walking around tunnels that looked like a maze, trying to remember where you came from and trying to define where you should go was definitely not fun

[@mikeluna2026]

ummm... I use unity, and that prefab and modular pieces style of design for everything like walls and floors, plus its variants, is quite an old idea in the community. Guess I had fooled myself into thinking that's how most people were working already. Still, any level designer would love to have access to such huge libraries of modular kits for all his projects. The work they've done is just amazing. Though, I just hope the next time I play the game there's some texture upgrades, lol, some of the original textures were high def and some others... well...

[@longpinkytoes]

and some others... well... could have easily been replaced by procedural shaders and saved a ton of memory xD

[@elfideorubio1308]

Hi great talk learn a lot of stuff, one thing that is not clear to me yet is dimensions on 5:18 you can see he is using numbers that are easily dividable by 2 is that always the case because I also see people using x 20 y 300 z 300 so it snaps perfectly with the grid of unreal?

[@longpinkytoes]

in cryengine a unit of 1 = 1m instead of 512 = a person. you can't even imagine how much easier that makes the math xD

[@tomsite2901uk]

Excellent talk to understand more about how Bethesda is doing Level Design, and if you compare their approach with many modders approach you know why some mods are just sub-zero. Now only the CK would need to be up to the job and stop crashing just because you moved your mouse or dared to look at the screen.

[@longpinkytoes]

i only have ck crash when i'm dropping one of every piece of a kit into a cell to go shopping. maya knows how to crash-on-save ;)

[@daveking-thatguy1407]

Good talk. As a fan of Bethesda Games, thought this was very interesting.

[@cpt.poorjudgment]

Great talk!

[@Quokkat7]

ive never played fallout, clicked because that thumbnail

[@blurryflag6466]

ecce homo at 12:18

[@DavLegit]

Robots are property, like toasters.

[@DavidM_GA]

I wish people would stop judging FO4 based on Fallout 1 and 2. Not all games need to be the same. The question is are they fun? I have had lots of fun in FO4 and see no reason to pine for the iso rpgs made earlier. The game is what it is. Wishing it was Fallout 1/2 doesn't make it trash except maybe to you.

[@DavidM_GA]

Oh, and I bought both of the first 2 games and won both many times.

[@HyborianYT]

People simply wish it would have proper writing with signature rpg elements that made previous games great. New Vegas was a proof that you can make a proper open world game with excellent stories to be told while still on dated engine and development cycle that was cut short by Bethesda and it forced Obsidian to rush the game.

[@WailFin]

Peon Greenjoy THANK YOU! And David Medlock, I'm judging it based on FO3 and Skyrim. Namely that FO3 was a brilliant entrepreneurial move that managed to pay homage to the original and utilize a preexisting engine while innovating enough to make something distinctive from both the previous Fallout entries AND Oblivion. I tried Fallout 4 for the free weekend, and I expected to be playing it at least 24 hours, since I loved Fallout 3 and Skyrim. But a few hours in I realized that I might as well just be playing one of those games, or Rust, or Minecraft even. I made 3 trips to scrap all the shit I got from clearing out the raiders and Deathclaw outside the Freedom Museum, and in the middle of scrolling through crafting options and thinking about how now apparently I had to build a settlement, I thought, "isn't one of the most viral songs from this game talking about being a wanderer? All I've done so far is stayed mostly in two places. And if things are going to be as uneventful as the trip from Sanctuary to Concord, what's the point in wandering?" Granted, these are just my first thoughts, but very quickly into Fallout 3 I had already stumbled into enough sidequests to get me engaged. The "Them!" quest with the mutant ants, Moira's work on the Wasteland Survival Guide, deciding whether to obey or narc on Burke, hell, fixing the leaks in the water pipes! My first thoughts in Skyrim? "Ooh! where does THIS lead? What's THAT? What's up THERE?" And usually I got satisfactory answers. FO4, perhaps in part because of the "modular" approach of populating levels with many copies of similar objects, seemed more time-consuming and tedious. I was giving in to my OCD, breaking stuff down, storing it. I wouldn't have said it was particularly FUN, though. I was expecting maybe a letter from vault-tec in one of the mailboxes in my now-ruined suburb I had all of 10 minutes to get attached to before it got nuked? Nope. I DID find an auto shop with entries about car repairs that, SURPRISE! stop when the bombs fall, and as far as I can tell offer NO relevant information to anything else, no sidequest where I have to inform the dead employee's next of kin, who happens to be a ghoul or something. Emotional stuff, something more than "this was a business until NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST BECAUSE WAR WAR NEVAR CHANGES!!" But nah. Actually, to be fair, I DID find a dog, and it helped me kill lots of mole rats there. So there's that. 10/10 Excuse me while I pay the discounted price of $36 to get the game in its entirety.

[@jonahulichny9874]

“Not all games need to be the same” Yes and no. Games in the same franchise do need some level of consistency. The Zelda games differ significantly from each other, but there are several core things that connect them. They all have dungeons that revolve around the games core mechanics, such as the vehicle mechanics in totk. Fallout 3 differs from the previous games with the implementation of the 3d world and combat. But the rpg mechanics were basically copy pasted from the first two. It’s different, but not so much that it feel like a different game. It’s still an rpg, even if it moved a dimension over. Fallout 4 differs in how it’s not an rpg. I mean it’s still technically one, but how dialogue is implemented speaks for itself. You can’t decide the outcomes of quests in the same way you could in the tenpenny tower quest from 3, or the quest with gizmo from fo1. A general lack of player agency in other words. And the lack of the generic skills in favour of perks makes it harder to make your character your own. It feels like your playing different versions of Nate or Nora rather than your own character. It’s a role play game with the ability to role play cut down. That’s the issue with 4, that’s why so many people dislike it. When people expect it to be like fallouts one or two, it’s because they expect it to be of the same genera because it’s part of the same franchise.

[@theser247]

Boring level design - THAT IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU WORK IN SILOS.

[@DarksiderDarmoset]

That was amazing!

[@FlameRat_YehLon]

No wonder why I really didn't enjoy dungeon raiding in Skyrim but enjoy it a lot in Fallout 4. XD

[@chrisbarnett6362]

Had to come and see this =)

[@drewwellington2496]

Perspective on the cube at 5:12 is all wrong compared to the hallway and it hurts my brain

[@michaelhowe9132]

What happened to Joels GDC talk on developing Skyrim?

[@XoRandomGuyoX]

One thing Bethesda really needs to be careful about is utilizing various forms of design to avoid the feeling of empty repetition for the player. Oblivion was notoriously terrible for its Lego-block dungeons, all with uniform enemy lists, uniform loot lists, and utter lack of uniqueness. If it wasn't tied to a quest it was completely boring and forgettable, like a Daggerfall dungeon. While core utility of the level editor is indeed quite important, it's up to the artists and storytellers to make an area unique and fun to explore. One office building needs to feel different from another, industrial plants should also feel different and have different things happening within them. It's something they've put some attention to with Skyrim and Fallout 4, but remains of paramount importance for the player experience, which is what ultimately matters when selling a game. Combining artistic aspects of world design and story telling are what will really "sell" a place to the player. It doesn't always have to be batches of pink slime in a school, but other schools should have their own thing happening, like the Bosco gang. Somewhat less successful was the Judge Zeller school, as that physical space was short and ho-hum, aside from the stage area with the victims arrayed. But the stage aspect helped sell the area.

[@0xCAFEF00D]

Very good and informative talk.

[@mrjed]

so thats why their games look like shit

[@youmenow1]

That would be their ancient engine.

[@diegoantoniorosariopalomin4977]

yes , as i have already explained in this comment section ; their assets are good but their shading is horrible

[@RPGAuthority]

Ice posidon works at bethesda?

[@Skuinchy]

fallout 76 is a base building fortnite clone confirmed.

[@themanwiththeplan4427]

Legos

[@any1alive]

thsisitn a new thignthis has been or atleast i thought others have been doign thsi forever ...

[@GoatOfTheWoods]

Yeah, for the people who Actually work in game dev , this talk is really interesting and useful Wait, does the dude have painted fingernails?

[@connorforce01]

To bad the writing dragged the game down, should of remembered Morrowind.

[@cosmotect]

When designing a city center, say 500 by 500 meters big, Is it best to block it out using random dimensions, just to get the overall feeling of the level, or should I create and start using kits from the very start?

[@jacksonelh]

you should start with a block-out. refer to 38:02

[@jcbbb]

What an amazing loss of originality...

[@MrInternetMan]

Love Bethesda. Thanks for this.

[@paulstaker8861]

It really takes working in these things to appreciate what the man's sharing here. Thanks, GDC. Very very helpful.

[@GorblinRat]

Amazing. This is so helpful for me

[@shoopdawhoopshoopdawhoop1645]

this *great" modular level design is one of the biggest flaws of fallout 4... the world feels very repetitve and uninspired a lot of things are just there for the sake of beeing their such piles of tires in the middle of the road or the middle of nowhere acting as Diffrent types of Rocks. basicly making zero sence and breaking immersion debris and trash in polulated areas... in far harbor there is this old lady. everyday she sits on the same table... the table is covered in trash... why? becasus lazy and fast level design.

[@rustie115]

ShoopDaWhoop ShoopDaWhoop would have been easier to read if you understood grammar and spelling literally at all

[@bearriver685]

rustie You're missing a comma or two there, bud.

[@8thlvlMage]

Actually missing zero commas, but it's pretty miserable grammar for someone trying to point out flawed grammar. Most of Shoop's issues were actually spelling errors. It was all over the place, but he has a good point, and we shouldn't dismiss it. (Despite the presentation.)

[@manictiger]

I would agree with that. They obviously rushed it. The guy that made these maps spammed the fuck out of 'doodads' and the result was very horrible performance on all but the most powerful GPUs, all the while already not looking great. First thing they needed to do was cut down on poly-counts on round objects they're going to spam 400 times (like cans; you don't need more than 8 sides on those; no one gives a shit). Textures were crap, too. That was one of the first mods that came out, was better looking, yet lower-res textures. I wanted to like it, but the building aspect needs it's own damn U.I. and the game needs streamlining so you don't need 20 GPUs to run it at 60 FPS.

[@shuth1986]

Yes it is fast and lazy level design but on the other side, if they would make every location unique the production time would increase by factor 10 which means most of us would be dead already before the game is released and no one could afford to buy it. 50 years development & 500€ per copy. Even the dev team would need to be replaced during the development 1-2 times...

[@rejoolan]

Пофиг, что пишу не на том языке, но! Но, видно, что очень многие по просту не понимаю, что по такому же принципу строятся все уровни в любой игре, в которую Вы играете. Плюс/минус свои внутристудийные нюансы.

[@longpinkytoes]

the best visual effects / CG are the ones people don't think are effects. people equate kits with bethesda because they are so noticeable.

[@celan4288]

Bethesda phoning it in looks so much worse since Witcher 3.

[@SqualidsargeStudios]

tis a shame that fallout 76 failed so hard. could have been great, i mean with these tools and tech.

[@kitten-inside]

It would require an entire new engine to be great. Slapping basic connectivity on top of an outdated engine for single player game is not the same as building a new one dedicated to multiplayer.

[@DavidVille]

is the 2013 talk somewhere online?

[@diegoantoniorosariopalomin4977]

David Ville can only find incomplete slides and a more complete transcription ( with images thankfully )

[@monitoriachris]

I dont get what means the "Hero Piece" that they talk... Somebody?

[@googleslocik]

+Monitoria Chris I assume he means a custom asset for this a particular scene, building style. Like a unique sculpture or pair of elaborate staircase. Its a bad approach, i mean not having them. Other studios will often build entire levels around such assets. Like a giant world tree in Zelda or a very unique looking building in any other game.

[@XoRandomGuyoX]

It's the "set piece" objects. I.e. unique specialty objects that really define a place. An example might be the rocket engine found in Arcjet Labs in Fallout 4. Only 2 of those engines exist in the game; the other is found on a flatbed truck south of that location. Another might be the giant metal globe within the Gunner Plaza.

[@muzboz]

Excellent. Thanks!

[@diegoantoniorosariopalomin4977]

43 17 modular cities

[@dontomaso11]

Gdc talk Bethesda

[@morthim]

what an ironic talk. he effectively argues against the points he tries to make. "the reading rooms it the most important room, and needs set pieces" how would you even know that was a library? "one swap makes it feel unique" no. having the deterioration in teh exact same places in the walls is worse and more uncanny than having many places have the same wall paper.

[@ClonesDream]

This just makes me appreciate the world of Fallout 4 even more than I already did.

[@chriss1672]

Wow. Did we play the same game? The game is trash sir

[@jonahulichny9874]

⁠@@chriss1672 people are allowed to have different opinions, and there isn’t a clear consensus on “is fallout 4 bad or good”. Many different people loved fallout 4, even if many other people also hated it.

[@mygaffer]

I feel like Bethesda has been working on how to avoid making a game themselves.

[@Kombi-1]

weiter! 15.10.2017 22.34

[@gymkhanadog]

They should be ashamed of FO4. Especially when compared to their previous two releases, FO3 and NV. Good thing people are using the engine, junking the equally junk game, and remaking FO3 and NV in the FO4 engine! Modders do all the best stuff and fix alllllll of the problems, teaching grossly overpaid Bethesda people how to finish what they start and how to put passion, love,time and dedication in to their work. Not just see another cash cow.

[@WailFin]

And Bethesda reads this as "Great! We can keep grossly overpaying people and let modders finish what we start so we don't have to put time, dedication, or any of that crap into our work, and we'll STILL be seeing another cash cow!" Can't wait for TESVI/FO5. They'll be basically the same game.

[@jonahulichny9874]

New Vegas was made by obsidian. Bethesda just published it.

[@isaac1403]

Wow so beast =)

[@cat-jf5lo]

How exactly are they doing the mouse-wheel swap? CTRL + mousewheel does nothing with selected piece in the creation kit.

[@Shadsterwolf]

Standardizing is always great, constancy is very important.

[@mihardituk1956]

heh?

[@TacDyne]

I get a kick out of how they act like this is some kind of new idea. We were doing this sort of tileset thing with swap out textures, damage, decals, etc. 20 years ago. I remember a dev who had worked on the Stargate MMO seeing one of my "walldolls"(tm), an interchangeable wall texture setup, and claiming, "Now that's how you get a raise!". That was in I think 2008. He was impressed with something I had already left behind as being old hat from several years prior.

[@HotBlasterBot]

So what do you use instead nowadays?

[@charlieking7600]

I mean this technique is also used in Daggerfall and Morrowind. The point of conference to tell your experience with it, I presume.

[@warmybo]

Классный материал!!

[@KrisDevelopment]

kit approach = samey redundant repetative old shit. Don't over use it. That's why skyrim dungeons look so repetative and uninspired.

[@h3rteby]

That's exactly the reason they moved to the more granular approach with Fallout 4 (what this talk is all about). More work for the level designers but greater flexibility.

[@PlebNC]

Creating new assets to reduce the repetitiveness would also increase the hard-drive/disc space those assets take up. Depending on how those assets are catalogued and called by the code, it may also increase the time it takes for them to be loaded and rendered into the game world after being called. Depending on how optimised the system that calls the assets is and the spec of the hardware running it, of course.

[@stanners1714]

PlebNC those things would be less of an issue if they had a better engine.

[@erwinzyx]

KrisDevelopment - You obviously haven't paid attention to this video. The video addresses the issues with Skyrim dungeons and how they were improved upon for Fallout 4.

[@iloveihop07]

7:57

[@nawdawg4300]

They really needed a comp sci major. Those solutions seem really obvious imo.

[@HieronymousLex]

Yeah how tf is recycling assets anything new or revolutionary? It’s an unfortunate byproduct of games getting too large to be hand built

[@Kombi-1]

ag

[@Kombi-1]

AAre there always macbooks at GDC?

[@accordingtohonda4308]

Have another drink.

[@pr3dator_180]

Modular environment is the only way you can build these huge ass games,at least for now,in future when we have better hardware,i think this will not play big role.

[@FictualKyle]

no you idiot.

[@ZakTheFallen]

Game companies are doing that RIGHT NOW. Bethesda is infamous for re-using assets and avoiding custom levels whenever possible. They would rather build a world of premade pieces than take the time and effort to build more interesting environments.

[@jacksonelh]

please give one example of an open world game that doesnt reuse assets